


Comeback

by rellkelltn87



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Author Has Unresolved Feelings about The Undiscovered Country, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic-ish, Declarations Of Love, Fix-It of Sorts, Minor Character Death, Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-24 21:30:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14364093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87
Summary: "Thing about America: This country loves a comeback." -- Rafael Barba





	1. Unseasonable

**Author's Note:**

> I used to do this a long time ago. I lost a bet! I have to post these two chapters! (Two chapters for now and we’ll see where this goes.) My writing style is “dig a hole I can’t get out of.” Characters are not mine. Spoilers for S13-S19 and, like, 30 years of L&O.

Olivia Benson was furious.

A victim had almost died because Peter Stone was a smug, smirking idiot who had never worked a single special victims/sex crimes case in his whole goddamn career before McCoy dragged him in as if he was the crown prince of the Manhattan DAs office.

Belinda Cowan, an ADA who worked on homicide cases upstairs, had come to Stone’s office that morning, bruised and bleeding, and begged him not to call an ambulance until she explained, and resolved, why there was a dead man in her apartment. That’s what Stone had told Benson when he called her at 9AM. 

Belinda had been followed home by a 55-year-old drunk who she’d rejected in a bar; he’d pushed her into her apartment, overpowered and raped her. Before he left, he cleaned up, methodically was what she told Stone, too methodically, and then his eyes caught something on her kitchen table. He flew into a rage, beat her bloody, pointed a gun at her head and was apparently going to — she didn’t know why she remembered this, if he’d told her or if she’d figured it out herself — stage a suicide. Finding a last bout of strength, she struggled with him and shot him in the chest with his own gun. 

She was in emergency surgery at Mercy Hospital now. The surgeons were trying to control the hemorrhaging, and told Benson and Stone that she should have been there at least six hours earlier. 

“You should have called a bus right away,” Benson told Stone when she was back in his office. 

“She said that she did not want to risk being charged with murder.”

“Who’s going to charge her with murder? My detectives are at her place now. Most clear-cut case of self-defense we’ve ever seen, based on what they’ve reported to me so far.”

“The guy could have family who demands that my office —“

“Oh. Oh, I see. That’s right. Uncle Jack likes to file charges against his own employees when the New York Ledger embarrasses him.” She took a breath. “Sorry. I’m sorry. The very least you could have done was make sure she got timely medical attention.”

She yanked her buzzing phone out of her pocket. “We’ve got a small problem,” Rollins told her.

“How small?”

“Still obvious self-defense, Carisi and I have got pictures, CSU’s on everything else, we’ve got everything you need. We think —“

“What’s the problem?”

“Let me get you up to speed, all right? You said she told Stone he saw something on the coffee table and flew into a rage. We think it was her paycheck.”

“From the DAs office.”

“Bingo. So here’s what’s up: our “vic” here had over 40 different forms of identification in his wallet. Different names. Different states. We have no idea who this is.”

“Oh, good.”

“Carisi bagged up the wallet. He’s going to register it as evidence and then start looking through the IDs.”

“Fine,” Benson said. “Wrap it up quickly, though. I don’t want Belinda charged with anything.”

“I got you.”

Benson filled Stone in on Rollins’ report. “Do me a favor,” she said. “If you want to do what’s right for Belinda, go upstairs, let your boss know what’s going on, and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“Liv,” he said, touching her shoulder as she turned to leave.

“What?”

“This is different.”

“Stop.”

“This is different. He had to charge Barba because he acted without regard to the family’s wishes.”

“I will say this only once. There were lesser charges that could have been filed against him. The parents were not the ones demanding that the DA file murder charges. It was the Ledger, asking “What is Jack McCoy going to do about the Baby Killer ADA?””

“Screw the Ledger and their epithets. Let me know how Belinda is doing as soon as you hear.”

“I will. You ever see anything like this again, and I hope you don’t, you call an ambulance first,” she warned him. 

“You and Noah went to the game on Saturday?” he asked, trailing her as she headed to the outside office.

“We almost froze to death, but, yes.”

“They’re doing remarkably well this year. Tell Noah —“

“He’ll learn an important life lesson or two in a few months, when they disappoint him.” She offered him a sarcastic smile. 

———

She was on her way out at six o’clock, bundled up for another unseasonably cold mid-April night, when she walked past Fin and Carisi poring over a sea of ID cards spread across Carisi’s desk.

“What’s this?”

“Carisi thinking he’s going to get more overtime,” Fin said.

“I’m searching the names on every single one of these drivers’ licenses.” 

“Neither of us is signing off on overtime,” Benson echoed.

“Listen, Lieu —“

“I’m going home. You work this out with Sergeant Tutuola.”

“Twenty different states,” Carisi said. “Three DUIs, all of ‘em with manslaughter attached. There’s more, too. I really want to shore this case up for Belinda, all right?”

Benson got it. Glancing over at Fin, she guessed that they were all on the same page with regards to why it was so important to make a thousand percent clear that this was self-defense. Justice for Belinda — who was out of surgery, but would be in ICU for at least the next few nights — meant making sure that there was no way McCoy could add insult to injury. 

She was on her way out the door, finally, ten minutes later. Fin caught up to her near the elevator. “Liv, Liv,” he called. 

“Sign off on it, I’ll cut his overtime next month,” she said, stopping in her tracks, rubbing her forehead.

“Something came over the communication network you might want to know about.”

“Will it ruin my night?”

“Might be better to hear it now than on the eleven o’clock news.”

“Who watches the eleven o’clock news?”

“This will be going to the Feds, I’m sure, but those floaters they found in the Harlem River this morning? A couple that had been reported missing two days ago by their friends: former State Senator Alex Muñoz and his wife.”

“Holy shit,” flew out of her mouth while a wave of nausea hit the back of her throat. 

“Yeah. Never made the news that they were reported missing, either.”

“Muñoz was a corrupt asshole who made fools out of a lot of people who trusted him. His wife, I don’t know them, but she didn’t deserve this. Neither did he. The punishment for political corruption isn’t death. No one deserves — anyway, I’m going home, good night, don’t let Carisi do anything stupid.”

She pressed the elevator button, then pressed it two more times. “And no,” she said, “since you’re trying so hard not to ask, I have not been in contact with Barba since he left.”


	2. Backstory

Six years ago, Rafael Barba disclosed his 6-month-long relationship with a Brooklyn SVU detective and put in for a transfer to Manhattan. He and Detective Charlie Lombard bought a co-op together, and with a year of moving in, their relationship fell apart. While Charlie was in the process of packing up and moving out, while their whirlwind romance was disintegrating, Barba’s onetime best friend Alex Muñoz was indicted on multiple corrupution charges. He kept his private life private, even as he and Yelina — the only other person he’d ever been in love with — lost faith in each other.

Back then he’d thought those few months were the worst moments of his life, that he could not sink any lower. 

He didn’t confide in Benson until well over a year later, a few days after his grandmother died. He’d texted her to tell her he’d be out a few more days; always (overly) sympathetic, she called him and suggested he come over. He accepted her invitation and she poured him a glass of wine. Wine or grief or both, something made him decide to confide in her. “You should have told me,” she said. “You should have told me last year, when I needed someone to complain to about buying a co-op with your romantic partner only to lose the romance and get stuck with the mortgage.”

They’d toasted to that. 

More recently, he’d thought that the worst moment of his life was when he was arraigned for murder, when, out of what had to have been, in retrospect, pure selfishness, he took a family’s decisions into his own hands when he could have just had Maggie Householder’s court order sped up.

He wondered, often, if Liv understood that the reason he had to leave her standing on a frostbitten, wind-tunneled Lower Manhattan street like that when he knew she wanted more was that the last thing she needed in her life was another partner who was always in need of rescue, of saving from himself. That was what he had become. Another friend who would drag Liv down, who would exhaust her. 

He’d spent four weeks in DC in an apartment that an old Harvard friend, now a law professor, had vacated while on a six-month sabbatical. His friend had helped him land a few interviews, two with law firms and two with universities. To the law firms, he would be a liability, despite his experience; the universities, however, showed some interest, which prompted him to put in a few more applications, a couple in Boston and one at — god forbid — Fordham. 

One night near the end of those four weeks, as he was getting ready to head up to Boston for two more interviews, Yelina called him, completely out of the blue. She said she was in town on business; he invited her over. 

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked. All he had was scotch.

“Water.” Her mouth was dry; he could hear it as she spoke.

He brought her a glasss. She sat on the couch and took a long drink. “What happened?” he asked, sitting next to her.

“I have to tell you something you’re not going to like.”

“How old is this one?”

Her eyes shot daggers at him. “You go after me for the thing that hurts me the most?”

“I’m sorry. Talk to me.”

“A couple years ago, you were getting death threats? A guy coming up to you at work, Heredio.”

There was no reason she should have known that name. “Alejandro?” he asked, choking a bit on the name. 

“Me.”

“You? You wasted days of two detectives’ lives — they were grieving over — why would you do that to me?”

“To protect Alex, to avenge him, I guess,” she said, offering a small shrug. “You know he’d have been the best mayor New York would have seen in decades. You know he was about real people, not special interests. You let a lot of people down when you went after him.”

“So you almost had me killed?”

“Scared. I wanted you scared.”

“I’d ask you to leave, but you came here for a reason.”

“You let our whole neighborhood down. You let lots of neighborhoods down.”

“Sorry to tell you this, _cariño_ , your husband is corrupt.”

“Only with regards to how he covered up his affairs.”

“You believe that?”

“He is —“

“Tell me, Yelina, do you believe that?”

“I’m sorry, _papi_.” The term of endearment only ever rolled off her tongue strategically. She kissed his cheek, lingering a little too long. “It’s been a rough couple of years, I know, for all of us. You and your _amorcito_ —“

“Don’t talk to me like that. Are you okay?” He lowered her free hand and stared at her, simultaneously angry and concerned, not sure whether to tell her to leave or to press her further regarding why she’d suddenly decided to confess. 

“No,” she said.

“How can I help?”

She abruptly stopped massaging her hand through his hair. “You can’t.”

“Then go,” he said. “I’m not going to play lovey-dovey with you while you tell me I let the city down, and you tell me that you hired somebody to corner me in an elevator and threaten to kill me.”

“Goodbye, then.” She stood, he stood with her, and out of pity, or necessity on someone’s part, they hugged each other. 

Maybe rock bottom would come a few days later, when he’d find himself alone in his mother’s kitchen after not having called her for six weeks, sobbing into his hand after Lucia commented that he’d selfishly thrown everything away on account of a selfish man, and then sarcastically referred to him as _el juez_.

“Rafi.” He hadn’t been able to pull himself together in time for Lucia’s return from the bathroom. “Rafi. I didn’t mean that. I wasn’t thinking straight.” 

When he was interviewing in Boston, no one back home told him that Alex and Yelina had gone missing for two days, that their oldest daughter, who was only 13, had called the police when her parents didn’t come home. No one told him that they’d been found in the Harlem River near the Third Avenue Bridge. He found out when, the night he came home, NYPD Sergeant Charlie Lombard called him for the first time in more than three years (the last time was after his grandmother died) to ask how he was doing. 

Charlie was married. He and his husband had adopted a six-month old a year ago. He had a new life, a house in Brooklyn. There was no reason he should be calling his ex … the news, when he broke it, hit Barba like a ton of bricks. 

“I thought you knew. I am so sorry, Raf, I am so sorry to have to be the one to break it to you.”

He wished he’d pressed Yelina further that night. He wished he’d gotten her to tell him what was wrong. Maybe he could have … he was an out-of-work lawyer, the Ledger’s infamous “Baby Killer ADA,” what could he have done, really?

The messages that came in later, from his mother and Eddie, he let those go to voicemail.


	3. No Standing

Yelina Muñoz had always had near-supernatural luck with street parking in New York City. She was revered amongst her friends in Manhattan and the Bronx, all the way up through Albany back when Alex was State Senator, for finding non-metered spots uptown and around Bronx Park on street cleaning days, and for never having to shell out an extra $30 for parking garages in midtown and downtown. Yelina could find a parking spot near Central Park on a sunny day when hundreds of tourists were in town and half the streets were closed off for construction projects. 

She’d bragged about how her parking spot luck extended to DC, Baltimore, Boston, and Toronto too. 

So of course, the one time Yelina failed to find a spot near her destination, parked in a “no standing” zone, and got a parking ticket, of course, was the night she went to see Barba in DC. 

Seventy-two hours after Alex and Yelina’s bodies were discovered, Barba was contacted by the joint federal-city task force that had been assigned to the case. They knew that Yelina had visited him, and wanted to know more. He called Rita Calhoun to accompany him. 

“I’m shocked you called me this time,” she said when they were crawling through traffic on the FDR a few hours later. “You didn’t think Randy Dworkin could have handled this one?”

He rubbed his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re my friend. I wasn’t going to drag you through my murder trial.”

“You don’t have anything to do with what happened to the Muñozes, right? You didn’t mercy-kill two adults?”

“You’re not supposed to ask me that.”

“Everybody who knows you from Harvard knows deep down you’re a puppy. A determined little asshole of a puppy, but —“

“Sure. And you’re a sweet harmless mouse.”

“What happened in Washington?” she asked.

“Stay in your lane.”

“If I’m going to represent you today, I need —“

“Rita, _stay in your lane_. You’re drifting right.”

“Says the man who renews his driver’s license every 8 years even though he hasn’t been behind the wheel of a car since, what, 1989?”

“She was in Washington on business and asked to come see me.”

“What happened? You slept with her?”

“I’m impressed with your restraint on “slept with,” but, no.” Now his forehead was pressed against the passenger side window, his eyes still shut. “She was a bit … affectionate, but we don’t need to tell the Feds that part. Her kids don’t need to hear any more stories about their parents. They loved those girls, whatever web of corruption Alex and Yelina got themselves into up in Albany, they would never do anything to hurt their kids.”

“But there was a lot you didn’t know.”

“She has one sister in New York who was … peripherally … involved when Alex was indicted. Her husband paid off, or tried to pay off, the fifteen-year-old Alex was in “communication” with. Her other sister is flying in from the DR to take care of the kids, in case child services has a problem with the brother-in-law.” 

“Raf?”

“What?”

“You’re talking a lot, you didn’t answer my question.”

“She confessed that she was the person who hired the man who threatened my life a few years ago.” He didn’t tell her the rest, that he suspected that Yelina, like many of the other “stand-by-your-man” political wives who’d been in the news during the past decade, had been forced into a “fixer” position for her husband. If you were responsible — or perceived to be responsible — for flushing Alex Muñoz’s career down the toilet, you got death threats, a payoff, or a well-paid position in the desert, depending on how much of a political threat the Muñozes thought you were, depending upon whether you encountered Yelina, her brother-in-law, or Hank Abraham first. 

Barba’s head continued pounding, the veins behind his eyes twisting, still reacting to the shock of the second person he’d ever been in love with calling him to tell him that the first person he’d ever been in love with had been murdered. 

So maybe it was best that he’d left Olivia standing on the street that afternoon in February. 

Maybe.

Calhoun accompanied him to the interview room and it quickly became clear that he was a person of interest, but not a suspect, which gave him some relief, even if the Ledger would surely jump on the story of the “Baby Killer ADA” being questioned by the joint task force investigating the Muñozes’ deaths. 

The team was led by Lieutenant Alexandra Eames, who he’d met a few times back when she’d worked on a similar task force for Homeland Security. 

He told her what Yelina had confessed to him, and Calhoun kept repeating “not a suspect, not a suspect,” half-question, half-demand. 

“Did Yelina tell you that she’d done this before, that she’d set up realistic death threats against people who she believed wronged her and her husband?” Eames asked.

“She didn’t.” She’d implied it, though. “I would prefer if we keep the information that Yelina shared with me as private as possible.”

“I can’t say much, Mr. Barba, but that piece of information may be key in solving the case.”

“Whatever you need to do. She was a good person.”

Eames stood up, flipped through her notebook, and let out a puff of air from her lips. “You say this about a person who had a gang member threaten you at work?”

“Trust me.”

“And State Senator Muñoz?”

“Did whatever he had to do to protect the people he was charged with protecting.”

——

By the next week, Alex and Yelina’s bodies had been in the Medical Examiner’s office for so long that there was no use in having a wake, and the families just wanted to get the burial over with, so they held a funeral in the chapel of the cemetery in Westchester where Alex’s parents were buried, late on a Friday afternoon. When Barba walked into the chapel with his mother, Yelina’s sisters, standing near the front pews, glanced over at him and then turned to two other women they were with. 

The women came up to him and were soon joined by a few other friends of the Muñozes. “We are all grieving,” one of Yelina’s sisters’ friends said in Spanish, talking through her teeth so as not to create a scene at a funeral, “so I won’t call you out for being stupid enough to show your face here. For the family’s sake, please leave.”

Barba nodded. 

“Mrs. Barba is welcome to stay,” she added. 

Lucia was the one who had predicted, hoped, many years earlier that Alex Muñoz would be the mayor of New York City before he turned 50. 

“You can get home all right?” Barba asked his mother.

“Yes,” she assured him, and she stayed. 

By the time he walked two miles in designer shoes to the Metro-North station, stopping halfway for coffee and Excedrin, he had just missed the next southbound train, by only three minutes. 

An hour later, ten minutes before the next train was scheduled to arrive, Eddie Garcia joined him at the station.

He laid an open hand on Barba’s back, over the dark trench coat that covered the black suit he hadn’t worn since, well, his murder trial. “Sorry about what happened back there,” he said. “Didn’t want to upset the family even if they’re wrong about you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“We’re heading to a bar to raise a couple hundred glasses to our friends. It’s only the family who didn’t want you there. The rest of them, they know it wasn’t you who got him in trouble.”

“I’m the reason he’s not the mayor. Several community leaders have pointed that out to me over the years.”

“I’m responsible too.”

“For covering for him?”

“For not covering for him. Are you coming with us or not?”

——

A little less than five years ago, when there were still boxes on the floor of the co-op apartment that Barba now lived in alone, when he was privately mourning the failure of a fling that had turned into a whirlwind romance that turned into love, Eddie told him that the gossip amongst the grandmothers was that Lucia Barba’s son — who had run off to Harvard while Alex stayed at CUNY and got into politics to make sure that education was accessible to every New Yorker — had made it so that Alex Muñoz could never be mayor, all because of a inconsequential sex scandal. That, Barba thought, had to have been rock bottom, the worst it could get for him. 

That was not rock bottom. Rock bottom was the night that Rafael Barba — a man who the Ledger still called the “Baby Killer ADA” whenever they saw fit — found himself much further west and south of where he was supposed to be because, in his drunkenness, he’d given his Lyft driver the wrong address and didn’t realize it until he was outside the car, shivering in the cold air that just wouldn’t get warm. Rock bottom was throwing up in the sewer drain outside Olivia Benson’s building.


	4. Probably Both

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for the most recent episode (4/18, "Sunk Cost Fallacy") in this chapter.

Rollins’ eyes were wide as she settled into the chair in front of Benson’s desk. “Don’t tell him I said this, but Carisi’s crackpot theory was right.”

Benson removed her glasses. “Oh?”

“ADA Cowan killed a hitman.”

“Tell me this helps us with any of our open cases.”

“Sort of. We’ve got the guy who killed Jules Hunter in Interrogation 1 now. Fin’s with him. We're lucky. This one doesn’t do too well when he’s caught, trying to give up any piece of information he’s got in exchange for leniency.”

“Has he asked for a lawyer?”

“Not yet.”

She eyed Rollins suspiciously. “Not yet,” Rollins repeated. “We don’t mess with that.”

“Even though he almost got Carisi killed?”

“We are playing by the book.”

“Then tell me, tell me, he was hired by Nick Hunter.” 

“Hunter’s team of lawyers will fight us on this, but we’ve got a confession on tape from the hitman.”

“And what does this have to do with the man who raped Belinda Cowan?”

“A lot. He told us he was trained by Matt Moretti, one of the best hitmen out there, he said, runs people off the road, knows how to fake a high BAC in case he gets caught. Moretti has done time for manslaughter in three different states under three different aliases and just keeps going. He’s been changing his M.O. up lately because technology’s gotten more sophisticated. The alias he gave us for his “mentor” — this Matt Moretti name — matches one of the aliases on one of the New York licenses Carisi’s got on his desk.”

“Good. Good. Lock down the Hunter case first, and I’ll call Stone and tell him to get ready for a fight. This is homicide, this is his neck of the woods. How’s Carisi?”

“With his sister Bella. Doctor says he’ll be on desk duty for a month because of the concussion.”

“I’ll give him a call later.” He might get some relief knowing that they (almost) had Hunter for hiring the hitman, it was unlikely he’d get custody of his daughter, and McCoy wasn’t going to charge ADA Cowan with murder, or manslaughter, or any lesser crime, no matter what the Ledger said. 

Her seasoned detective gut was growling. 

How many other murders was Belinda’s rapist responsible for? More apropos to Benson’s unit, how many unsolved rapes was he responsible for? 

She put in a request with the ME’s office for DNA testing on the John Doe with at least 30 aliases.

The ME’s office told her that Carisi had already put in the same request, and they’d have the results in a few days.

On the news that afternoon: _A funeral is being held in Westchester today for disgraced State Senator Alejandro Muñoz and his wife Yelina, whose bodies were found in the Harlem River last week. A joint task force is investigating whether their deaths are related to the corruption scandal that broke out days before the 2013 mayoral election._

Benson checked in with Carisi, assured him that there was nothing he could have done to stop the driver from ramming into them at 55mph, as he was clearly aiming for the passenger side. Carisi thanked her, but his voice was still shaky; he would never forgive himself for this one.

She went home — miraculously! — at 5pm on a Friday night without any of the squad stopping her on her way out. At home, she heated up dinner for her and Noah, he played “jail” for a while (he’d been building larger and larger prison complexes for his stuffed animals; she’d have to run that one by the child psychologist at their next appointment), and, by 11pm, for the first time in weeks, she had a soundly sleeping kid and was scrolling through Netflix without any work concerns on her mind. 

Her phone chimed. So much for that. 

_Liv so sorry inmjk outside not feeling gtras. Liv I’m sorry can you let me up for a minute_

What?

The funeral had been that afternoon; she wondered if he was drunk. She read the message again. Of course he was drunk.

They only came back when they were drunk, or accused of a crime, or …

She called his phone and he answered with a rushed “yeah yeah yeah.” “Go into my lobby,” she said, “stand under the security camera so I know it’s you, and I’ll buzz you up.”

He could have rang her neighbor who buzzed up everybody, the sixty-year-old lady who’d fallen for the IRS phone scam three times already. She should probably bring that up at the next board meeting, she reminded herself, if she wasn’t working. 

She flipped to the channel that broadcasted the closed-circuit tv from her lobby and buzzed him up. She opened the door a minute later and saw him stumble out of the elevator, holding his coat, suit jacket, and tie over his arm. 

“I’m okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. 

“No, you’re not, get in here.” She closed the door behind them. The only light in her apartment came from the hutch above the stove. “Did you throw up in my lobby?”

“On the street.”

She let out an exasperated groan.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “My showing up here is the last thing you need. It was an error in judgment.”

She filled a glass with water from the kitchen sink, took his coat and jacket and threw them on the counter, then shoved the glass into his hands.

“I’d send you home, but if you choke on your own vomit, they’ll blame it on me.” _You’ll blame it on me. From the grave, you’ll say it was because I changed your life, because I made you see blues and greens and purples._

“That’s a bit indelicate.” Half-drunk and with red eyes and vomit breath, showing up after almost three months away, he was accusing her of being indelicate. 

“Come on. I’ll get you a pillow and a blanket. Drink the water, go sleep on the couch.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“For what?”

“For dragging you through the mud with me.”

“Rafa.” She reached out an arm, put a hand behind his shoulder, and drew him into a hug just like she had that night a few years ago after his grandmother had died, just like she had in the courtroom after he was found not guilty. “You smell like whiskey and vomit.”

She felt him shake from his shoulders down to his belly and couldn’t be sure whether he was laughing or crying.

Probably both. 

“Go ahead,” she said, signaling towards the couch. “I’ll have to figure out how to explain this one to Noah in the morning.”

“I’m sorry,” he reiterated.

“You have no idea what you’re sorry for,” she said, planting a big, sloppy kiss on his forehead. If it was possible for a kiss to be sarcastic, that particular kiss was the most sarcastic kiss in the history of kisses.


	5. Sentence

Sunlight. 

Horrendous sunlight. 

One perfectly targeted, burning, blunt ray of sunlight pressing on his closed eyelids.

His face hurt.

The sounds of Saturday morning garbage trucks eight floors below rattled in his ears.

Scotch, anger, vomiting, grief, and crying were not a good combination for a man in his mid — going on late — forties.

_His face hurt._

He sat up, which relieved some of the pressure on his neck, and focused on the empty water glass from last night sitting on a magazine on top of Benson’s coffee table. The clock on the cable box read 6:55. 

He grabbed his pants, which had been slung over the back of the couch, and slid them on. His suspenders, shirt, and socks were there too, but for now, the undershirt and pants were the best he could do. Slowly, he stood up and shuffled towards the bathroom, but was thwarted by the sound of the shower running. 

So, he returned to the couch and pretended to be asleep until Benson was done in the bathroom. After emptying his bladder (finally), he headed to the kitchen — the floor was ice cold, why was the city still so cold more than a month into spring? — and refilled his glass.

Not long afterwards, Benson emerged from her room in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair still damp from the shower. She tossed him a bottle of naproxen. He missed and the bottle rolled towards his feet.

“You’re a terrible catch,” she said.

His face hurt when he bent down to pick up the bottle. Wasn’t the new guy, the one who’d prosecuted him until he cried up there on the stand, a former baseball player? Barba fiddled with the childproof cap for a few seconds, then swallowed two of the pills and closed it again, leaving the bottle near the Keurig. He would have looked askance at Liv’s weak coffeepod machine, but his eyeballs hurt too much for him to look at anything askance.

“You need some food in your stomach.”

“I’ll get something on my way home. I’m not going to put you out any more than I already have.”

“There’s a bagel shop downstairs. They make good, strong coffee.”

“You have these,” he said, winding a coffeepod between his thumb and forefinger. “What do you know about “good, strong coffee”?”

“Your loss. And your friend Noah has been asking about you for months.”

He closed his eyes, a little more defeated.

“Mom!” he heard from the other room. 

She held up an index finger to excuse herself. “No,” he heard Noah say, “I don’t want to! I _don’t want to _!”__

__He heard Benson mumbling, obviously trying to keep him from hearing what she was saying to Noah. She came back out and explained that Noah wanted to wait in his room while she ran downstairs._ _

__“I’ll be twenty minutes,” she said. “I’m waiting on a grocery delivery this afternoon and I have almost nothing in the house. You need to eat before your walk of shame.” She leaned in close for a second. “No Lyft driver will take you home with that vomit breath.”_ _

__“You don’t have to —“_ _

__“I don’t,” she said, squaring her hands on his shoulders, “but you’ve just had to bury two of your friends, so I am going to —“_ _

__“My friends. I was kicked out of their funeral.”_ _

__“I’m sorry.”_ _

__“At least they let my mother stay.”_ _

__“And she stayed?” Benson asked._ _

__“Yes.”_ _

__She ran her hands up and down between his shoulders and elbows but kept a distance. “I would hug you, but you smell terrible.” She put an open hand on his undershirt, over his heart, instead._ _

__“Go,” he said, placing one of his hands over hers._ _

__“You’ll be all right with Noah?”_ _

__“Sounds like he’s not planning to come out of his room. I will have to explain to him at some point why he hasn’t seen me around.”_ _

__“You can’t reason with a five-year-old. Explain yourself to the Keurig instead.”_ _

__“What about you, can I explain myself to you?” he asked._ _

__“I’ll consider it,” she said._ _

__——_ _

__She came back 22 minutes later, and was surprised to find Noah up and about, arranging stuffed animals and couch pillows in the living room. As she stepped further in and set the bag of bagels and styrofoam carrier for the coffees down on the table, she had to roll her lips together to keep from laughing. Through wide eyes, she saw the makeshift prison that Noah had built, his biggest one yet, a circle of couch pillows, blocks, and blankets, guarded by stuffed animals. Barba sat in the middle of all of it, his bare feet hanging over the pillows._ _

__Barba shrugged. Benson laughed._ _

__“Noah, honey, what’s Uncle Rafa in for?” she asked, trying to keep a straight face as she unpacked the bagels and cream cheese from the bag._ _

__“Nothing,” Noah answered plainly._ _

__“Nothing? You can’t be in jail for nothing.”_ _

__“Tell that to —“ Barba started to say._ _

__“He’s five, Rafa.”_ _

__“Noah has made the charges clear to me,” Barba assured her._ _

__“Has he? Noah, let’s give Uncle Rafa a break so he can have breakfast.”_ _

__“He’s supposed to stay in jail for 107 years.”_ _

__She nodded, looking over at Barba, who was feigning seriousness in response to Noah’s sentence. “If he doesn’t eat something soon,” Benson told her son, “he’s going to have a terrible stomachache.”_ _

__“Will he throw up?”_ _

__“Probably.”_ _

__Benson helped him up, holding his bicep as he got his footing. “Uncle Rafa’s going to throw up his own liver in about five minutes,” he said, half under his breath._ _

__“So,” she said as soon as they were eating (and Barba appeared to be gulping hot coffee between bites, without regard for how badly he’d burn his tongue), “what did you charge him with?”_ _

__Noah just grumbled and took another bite of bagel, offended his mother would even ask._ _

__“You want me to tell her?” Barba asked._ _

__“No.”_ _

__“Okay, then. Trust me, Liv, I know my crime, and I agree with Noah that I deserve 107 years.”_ _

__She reached over and patted his hand, then gave his fingers a squeeze. He curled his fingers under and squeezed back._ _

__“I have an idea,” Barba said. “How about I come back tonight and bring you and mom cheeseburgers —“_ _

__“I only like them without the cheese.”_ _

__“How about I bring you a cheeseburger without the cheese —“_ _

__“That’s a hamburger.” The kid was exasperated._ _

__“Yes, that’s right. I’ll bring everybody dinner tonight and I’ll serve a few more hours of my 107 year sentence.”_ _

__“Fine.”_ _

__When Noah headed to the bathroom after they finished eating, Barba stood to leave. He put on his socks and shirt and reattached his suspenders, and grabbed the rest of his things off the counter. “We’ll talk tonight?” he said._ _

__“Yes.”_ _

__“I’m going to call Rita and make sure Lieutenant Eames hasn’t bugged her about anything else —“_ _

__“They called you in for questioning?”_ _

__“Not as a suspect. I also want to call Eddie and see if they’ve set up a fund for the girls. Can’t do too much since I’ve been unemployed the last few months, but I’ve got to do something.”_ _

__“I know.” The two words were understanding, sympathetic, sweet._ _

__“Whatever happened with them was like a Shakespearean tragedy, I need you to understand that. They were different people when we were younger.”_ _

__“I know. You don’t have to explain why you’re hurting, you don’t have to defend them to me. You're coming back?"_ _

__"I said I was."_ _

__"I want to talk to my best friend again. I don't want to talk to the man who said he had to move on, and I don't want to talk to the man who showed up drunk outside my building last night. But right now you need to go home. You stink.”_ _

__He quickly licked his lips his eyes sloped downward as he nodded in complete agreement with her assessment. “I do. I stink. I love you.”_ _

__“I love you too. Go home.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments and kudos so far. This business of resolving unresolved feelings about The Undiscovered Country is exhausting. ; ) Expecting 10 or 11 chapters to get this where I want it to go.


	6. 106 years, 11 months, 29 days

When he got out of the shower, he found a new patch of gray in his hair and a message from Lieutenant Eames on his phone. He wrapped the lower half of his body in a towel and headed to the bedroom to retrieve some clean clothes, hoping he wouldn’t be called in for more questioning, hoping he wouldn’t have to let Olivia and Noah down. 

He called her back. “Mr. Barba,” Eames said, “quick question for you. Who were the detectives who handled the investigation regarding the death threats against you? NYPD had no record.”

“It was done — somewhat — informally by two SVU detectives I worked with. They were concerned, originally, that it was related to a case they were working on.”

“If we need you, you’ll be able to testify that Yelina said she was behind the threats?”

“Yes. I’ll be the last person either of their families wants to see in the courtroom but I’ll be there if you need me. Amanda Rollins and Dominick Carisi were the two investigating detectives.”

“All right, thank you.”

“May I ask —“

“Are you available to meet for coffee? I’d like to run some of the details of the case by you to see if they make sense, since you’re one of few people we’ve talked to who seems to know what the Muñozes were really about. Everyone else we’ve spoken with either uncritically defends them or uncritically attacks them. If not, you’re welcome to come in Monday.”

“Today is fine.”

_Please_ , he thought as he pulled a long-sleeve polo over his head, _please let Yelina get some peace_. She’d been genuinely frightened that night in DC, and, he realized, if she hadn’t confessed to him that she’d been behind the death threats, the joint task force would never have followed the leads they’d followed.

He met Eames for (fairly terrible) coffee at a diner downtown that he knew made good cheeseburgers (with and without cheese) to ensure he’d be able to keep his promise to Noah. Eames was already sitting in a booth with a legal pad and tablet when Barba came in and sat across from her. 

“I didn’t want to tell you the rest over the phone. Not that I should be sharing the details of the case with a layperson, but I need you on board if this goes to trial.”

“You have me on board, no matter what.”

“Do you remember Hank Abraham?”

His face fell; he could feel his heart thunk as if it was threatening to stop. “I worked those cases.” 

“Oh, no, no, it’s got nothing to do with the child pornography charges,” she said, apparently realizing why he’d gone so pale. “He’d arranged for two women who Muñoz was having affairs with to get jobs in Tel Aviv. Last year, one of Muñoz’s former campaign staff was planning to testify to that because it meant more jail time, or at least less change of parole, for Abraham, and no one wants that guy in their neighborhood.”

“Which means,” he said, shifting in his seat, “Alex would have had to do more time too.”

“We think Yelina called in similar threats against the staffer, who retaliated by having them killed. The staffer” — she wouldn’t give up the suspect’s name while the investigation was still active — “most likely had a lot of money in the bank because of payoffs from Abraham way back when. That’s all I can say for now.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“You’ll need to corroborate that the Muñozes had a history of calling in these death threats against people who they perceived might take down the state senator’s political career.”

“If you go to trial,” Barba warned her, “defense counsel will try to make it look like they brought this on themselves.”

“And the federal attorneys will remind them that vigilanteism is also punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

Eames explained what the ME’s office believed had happened: They’d been lured out to the Bronx in the middle of the night in order to pay off a 16-year-old who Muñoz had been accused of sexting, so as to avoid a new scandal and new charges. As they drove over the Third Avenue Bridge, one of the few bridges in the city that had no cameras set up, and no tolls, they were run off the road, likely by an SUV. When they got out of the car, the SUV rammed into them, creating only a small dent in the railing on the bridge, but breaking bones and sending the Muñozes into the Harlem River. It was bold. There was no weapon to trace, no camera in sight until the Major Deegan Expressway. 

It broke his heart that he’d made such an effort to re-harden, knowing that they’d probably died scared, drowning with broken bones. He wished that anybody on the case, anybody, had known them when they were younger. He wished Eames could understand why so many former friends and community leaders were so legitimately mad at Barba after the events of October 2013.

He sat in the booth for five minutes after Eames left, frozen, hand glued to his coffee cup, processing, or failing to process, what had happened to the Muñozes.

Later, as he opened his wallet to pay for the burgers that he’d promised Olivia and Noah, he considered how he only had about six more months to find a job before his savings ran out. He’d applied for positions at a handful of law schools and law firms, but apparently, 21 years in the DAs office meant all you were qualified for was 21 more years in the DAs office. 

Six more months without a job, between mortgage payments, co-op maintenance fees, and health insurance, he might have to sell the apartment and move in with his mother.

“ _Mi nieto_ , The Honorable Rafael Barba,” he could hear his _abuelita_ saying, “Rafi, you gave up everything. For what? For who?”

On the tv mounted to the wall above the cash register, a reporter announced that an arrest had been made in the Muñoz case, a former campaign staffer who had been set to testify against Muñoz in the latest of the corruption cases stemming from the events of 2013. 

He showed up at Benson’s place a little after 6. He shrugged off his peacoat and hung it on a hook behind the front door, then dropped the bag of burgers and fries on the counter. 

“You look better,” she said. “A little better.”

Wordlessly, he hugged her. 

“If you disappear again,” she added, “don’t come back vomiting on the sidewalk outside my building.”

“I’m not disappearing.” His voice cracked. 

“What happened?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Okay.” She rubbed his back and led him to the table. He was not deserving of her kindness. 

When Noah emerged from his room, he told the boy that he was ready to serve out the next 106 years, 11 months, 29 days, and 23 1/2 hours of his sentence. Benson, who was taking plates down from a cabinet above the kitchen counter, called out, “We should probably talk about commuting that.”

—-

After dinner, Barba served another half an hour in Noah’s makeshift jail. While Benson put her son to bed, Barba wiped down the table and made them two cups of horrendous bitter coffeepod coffee. “What’s this?” she asked when he handed her a mug. 

“Bad coffee,” he said. “I assume you poured the rest of my scotch down the drain when I left.“

“Bathtub. Cleared up a hair clog I’d had in there for weeks.”

“You could just call maintenance.”

“I’m never home during the day.” She sat with him on the couch and curled her legs under her.

“Anyhow, if I put any more liquor in my body this week, my liver will pick up and leave.”

“What happened today? You want to talk?”

“No,” he said, taking a sip of coffee and briefly wincing, “but, I do have to explain myself.”

“You don’t,” she said, reaching out and squeezing his hand. “Not today. You’re hurting.” 

He rested his cup on a coaster on the end table and slid closer. Benson looked right at him, clutching her cup with both hands again. “You’re hurting,” she repeated.

“It was bad.”

“They need you back for questioning?”

“No, not that. They may need me to testify, though, to corroborate that they had a history of calling in death threats to their enemies. Eames told me how Alex and Yelina were killed. They were run off the road, on the Third Avenue Bridge, by a guy who knew how to avoid every camera in this city. When they got out of their car, he used his SUV to ram them over the railing … they died in pain, they died scared, I was hoping that at the very least that wasn’t the case.”

She clicked her tongue, wanting to say something as her detective gut jumped up into her throat yet again, but quickly stopped herself. There was time for that later. She could call Eames on Monday. “You can talk to me,” she told Barba. “Or, you can talk to a therapist. After what McCoy and the media put you through with that trial, you probably should talk to a therapist, but I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

“I will.”

“I’ll give you a couple of names.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll be okay.”

“They weren’t,” he said brusquely.

“I know. Come here.” She put down her coffee and drew him into an embrace; he rested his head on her shoulder. 

“I left because —“

“You don’t have to do this. Not tonight.”

“I left because I thought it was best for you. I thought I’d peel off the bandaid, it would sting for a while, and then you’d be better off not having another friend who always needs … fixing … in your life. You said “and …”, and instead of saying “and I love you,” I kissed you on the forehead and disappeared for two and a half months. I thought that was what would be best for you. I was wrong. And stupid.”

She leaned down and kissed his lips, and his tongue, which she’d so often seen darting in and out of his mouth, pressed itself to her own tongue, lightly, tentatively. 

“I’ll make this up to you,” he promised.

“Just be here.”

He kissed her lips again, then broke away to kiss her jawline and her chin. “Here?” he asked, smirking just a bit.

“Here.”

He planted his mouth deliciously in five different spots down her neck, then trailed down to her collarbone.

“I-am-going-to-“ Each word was separated by his finding a new spot on which to plant his lips. “Kiss every single spot on your skin, every single spot on your body, except your forehead.”

He pulled away to look at her. Bemused and flushed at the same time, she said, “Fair enough. For now.” 

——

She was still awake at 2:30 AM, maybe on account of the bizarreness and wonderfulness and was-this-a-terrible-ideaness of Rafael Barba in her bed almost three months after that abrupt forehead kiss she thought had marked the end of their friendship, maybe on account of what he’d told her about how Alex and Yelina had been killed, how much it bothered him, how familiar that M.O. seemed, but mostly on account of the strange delight of him next to her, under the covers in nothing more than a pair of plaid boxers, his chest pressed flush against her back, an arm around her, resting on her bare stomach. Mostly it was the rush, the sort of rush she hadn’t felt in years, from his having kept his promise to kiss her everywhere except her forehead. 

“Rafa, are you up?”

He snorted out of sleep and that made her laugh. “Shh,” he said, “this will be much harder to explain to the kid than me on the couch yesterday.”

“Aunt Amanda, did you know that Uncle Rafa has been at our house the last two days?” she said, mimicking Noah. Noah had sold her out when she’d let Cassidy hide out at her place a few weeks ago, but she wasn’t about to tell Barba that. 

He peppered her spine with light kisses. “I need to call Eames on Monday,” she said, and he groaned — not the pleasant sort of groan — against her back.

“Why,” he mumbled into her skin. “Why why why why why why why …”

She turned to face him. He tilted his head, his expression serious but relaxed, and took her hand and drew it to his chest. “I don’t want to bring this up now, but …” She trailed off, unsure of when would ever be a good time.

“ _Digame_ ,” he said, absentmindedly stroking her hair.

“What you said about how the Muñozes were run off the bridge … we don’t have to talk about this now if you’re not ready.”

“It’s fine.”

“The M.O. is very similar to a hitman we’ve got in custody, and also to the hitman who “trained” him, who is … he’s the rapist Belinda Cowan killed in self-defense.”

“How’s Belinda doing?”

“She was in ICU a few days, but physically, she’s recovering, they tell me. She’s home now. And McCoy’s not going to file any charges against her.”

“I hope for everyone’s sake the hitman who killed the Muñozes turns out to be the one who’s alive and can be questioned.”

“So do I, but I have a feeling it’s our dead guy. I’m sorry.” In the dark, she returned his kindness, running her hand through his hair, behind his ear. 

“I’m all right.”

“I’ll talk to Eames on Monday. Hey, look, for the next couple of hours, we don’t have to think about conflicts of interest, all these coincidences that keep coming up, around every corner. It’s just us.” 

“Just us.” He took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. “I think I missed that spot.”

“No worries. The ten, fifteen minutes you spent arguing your case elsewhere more than made up for it.”

She saw him grin, followed by real (though muted) laughter. She started laughing with him. “I thought you needed a good cry tonight,” she said, “and here we are, cracking up.” 

“I’ve cried enough, Liv, believe me. This is better.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, so have I.”

“I understand that’s why I’ve been sentenced to 107 years in couch pillow jail.” 

“Oh really?” she said, propping herself on on one elbow. Her kid sold her out any chance he got. 

“I won’t tell you what he told me, but I deserve my sentence.” 

“You _deserved_ ,” she said, punctuating the word forcefully, “not to have been put on trial.”


	7. Grand Unified Theory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Seriously? All this time, all this grief, and you’re heading right back into the DA’s office?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Spoilers” here for Season 6 of Mothership Law & Order, or L&Os first attempt at something of a story arc running through a season, or headcanon that keeps me up at night, or I’m a little bit mad at fictional character Jack McCoy, ok? (So is Benson.)

“This is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Benson said the next Wednesday afternoon, when DNA testing had linked Belinda Cowan’s rapist to three more rapes in Brooklyn, two in Manhattan, and eight DUIs in four different states. He’d served minimal sentences for three of the DUIs under three different aliases, and had been given probation for the others under five additional aliases.

The hitman they had in custody for the Hunter case had known his mentor as “Matt Moretti,” which was also likely an alias. Eames said that the MOs they’d seen in the “DUI” hits and in the Muñoz murders matched fifteen other cases dating back to 1988.

In Manhattan alone, two cold case rapes and three cold case murders would have to be reopened, and at least another two DUIs had to be reopened as murder cases.

One of those DUIs involved ADA Claire Kincaid, Harvard law graduate, rising prosecutorial star, who at thirty-one was killed by a drunk driver while her passenger was injured but spared. In fact, if you looked at the most recent hit carried out by Moretti’s younger disciple, on Jules Hunter, the injuries were remarkably similar to that case, if you reversed the roles of driver and passenger. Eames’ former partner, now retired but still picking up consulting work with the feds sometimes, had picked up on the connection and had made the suggestion to her on the phone the night before.

“So,” Eames told Benson, “I’m heading down to Centre Street to talk to McCoy about appointing a temporary special prosecutor to handle the legal side of reopening these cases. The attorneys I work with are too busy with the Muñoz murders and a whole slew of corruption cases associated with them.”

Together, Lieutenants Benson and Eames had more than 50 years’ experience in law enforcement. They’d handled some of the most bizarre cases in the history of the NYPD. They’d handled cases that had made them question reality. But this one — the national scope of it, the way the hitman had successfully faked a high blood alcohol content again and again, the connections to both the DA and Barba — was overwhelming.

“Come with me,” Eames said. “The two rape cases in Manhattan are your squad’s. You should be in on this meeting.”

McCoy was the last person she wanted to see, but, from a professional point of view, if her squad was reopening those two cold case rapes, she probably should accept the invitation to sit in.

When Eames told McCoy about the M.O. in the “DUI murders,” his face fell, like he knew what was coming. “I can go,” Benson said. “This has nothing to do with the SVU side of the investigation.”

“Stay,” McCoy said hoarsely. “I don’t see the point in opening an —“

“It’s murder for hire, which means there’s another party involved,” Eames said. “That’s why we need to reopen all the similar DUI cases as murders.”

“This is going to be expensive.”

“The feds are footing part of the bill.”

“All right,” McCoy said. “Do what you need to do, lieutenant.” He wrote a name on a notepad on his desk, tore off the top sheet, and handed it to Eames. “Only family left is her stepfather, a professor at Harvard Law. I’d assume he’s still somewhere around Cambridge. He’s 85 years old, though, a widower — I’m not sure what this would do to him.”

“Knowing what happened,” Benson said, “seeing an arrest made, might give everyone involved some peace.”

“We’ve already made peace with what happened. My daughter didn’t speak to me for years. You’ll be re-opening old wounds, but if that’s what the law calls for, do what you must.”

On their way out, Eames told Benson that, having read the file on the Kincaid DUI that morning, she understood why he’d be reluctant to open the case, why his daughter (from, incidentally, his marriage to another former assistant) had been estranged from him. “The ME reported a high HCG level?” Benson guessed.

“Bingo. That is, I can’t confirm or deny.”

“I’ll strike your “bingo” from the record. Maybe we’ll find out McCoy himself ordered the hit,” Benson said, a joke she wouldn’t usually let fly out of her own mouth, but she still had no forgiveness, no sympathy towards the man. As much as he had been willing to let Barba keep his job, the extremity of the charges he’d filed against him, the unnecessary trial he’d put him through, was at least part of the reason why Barba had left her alone in front of the courthouse that day, why he’d shown up three months later, drunk, dehydrated, throwing up in the sewer drain.

“My team is questioning the family of a man who was executed twelve hours before Kincaid was killed. They had mob connections and motive.”

“Damn it, I was hoping McCoy would be put on trial for murder.”

“Because turnabout is fair play?” she asked, letting out a quick, sympathetic laugh. “Hey, NYPD is giving the Captain exam the first week of November. You want to be study partners?”

“Not sure if I’ll get the okay from above. Dodds’ opinion of me swings back and forth every couple of months.”

“He told me there aren’t enough lieutenants taking the exam this year, so he might be all for it.”

“According to my sergeant, who I’ve known for eighteen years, Dodds thought my son being kidnapped by his biological grandmother was a sign that I couldn’t do my job.”

“It can’t hurt to put in for it.” Eames waited until they were back in her SUV to continue. “From my perspective, all those years I spent babysitting a brilliant detective who refused to look after his own health until maybe five years ago, I deserve another promotion.”

—

On Friday, after coming in at 4AM to take care of yet another bizarre detail that had thrown another wrench in yet another bizarre case, Benson headed home at 2:30 in the afternoon. Lucy had promised Noah ice cream on the first springlike day the city had seen in a while, so she texted Barba to see if he was stopping by early. _On my way back, meet you there_ , he replied.

She was surprised to find him outside her building in his gray three-piece suit, clutching a briefcase. “Interview?” she asked him as they headed into the lobby and towards the elevator.

“Temporary position that gives me a salary, health insurance, and six more months to find something permanent.”

She glanced at him sideways. “ _What_ temporary position exactly?”

“I’ve been appointed to help the joint task force re-open the rape and murder cases involving the man who raped ADA Cowan.”

“Seriously? All this time, all this grief, and you’re heading right back into the DA’s office?”

“It’s temporary. I need a job. And, before you say “conflict of interest,” I will not be involved with the Muñoz case, because that’s its own separate beast, and besides, when McCoy was a prosecutor, he had conflicts of interest up to his … we’ll be nice and say “ears.””

“Come here,” she said, pulling him towards her by his jacket as soon as they were inside. “I don’t want to talk about the DAs office anymore. We have three months — a year, two years, I don’t know — to make up for.”

He shrugged off the jacket and she unbuttoned his vest. She wound her hands around his suspenders and pulled him towards her. “The suspenders really do it for you?” he asked, catching his breath between kisses.

“I can’t be the first.”

“Well.”

She pushed him towards the wall and started to unbutton his fly. “Leave everything on,” she demanded.

“Wait wait wait,” he said, and she lifted both hands in retreat even though he still had a dopey grin plastered across his face. “These are perfectly tailored suits, my pride and joy. I have a rule: sexual activity and pants do not mix.”

“Surely you’ve broken that rule before.”

He returned his lips to her neck. “I have. These are nice pants, though.” Now he was teasing her, in every sense of the word. “How long have you had this … fantasy?”

“Oh, I’d say something like two, three years. Got me going when I couldn’t get going, you know?”

“How much time do we have?” The _three years_ clearly flattered him.

“None,” she answered, hearing a key in the door.

He let out a small, frustrated “ah” and headed for the bedroom as Noah and Lucy returned early from their outing.

They'd lost three months, but they had years to make up for, the two of them.


	8. These Untold Stories

Moretti had 46 aliases. Nearly 50 DUIs across the country had to be reopened as murders-for-hire. Eames’ team was quickly frustrated by family members who opposed reopening their cases, which could mostly be explained by the fact that many of the murder victims had themselves been involved with criminal enterprises. But the Manhattan and Brooklyn SVUs were frustrated too: three of the five rape victims were reluctant to return to the courts. 

“He’s dead,” one woman told Benson. “You want me to go to court and revisit what happened ten years ago, even though it changes nothing?”

On the last Friday in August, just before Labor Day weekend, the District Attorney called a morning meeting to assess the joint task force’s progress on the cases associated with Moretti. Since Special Victims was also involved, the meeting brought together, in a windowless conference room downtown, DA Jack McCoy, special prosecutor Rafael Barba, ADA Belinda Cowan, Lieutenant Eames of the joint task force, Lieutenant Benson of Manhattan SVU, and Sergeant Lombard of Brooklyn SVU, sitting in for his captain, who was recovering from cardiac stent surgery. 

“We should be able to get all five rape cases closed by November,” Barba insisted.

From across the table, Lombard shook his head. “How do you expect us to do that when three of our victims aren’t willing to go on the record a second time?”

“You’ve got twelve years in SVU. Find a way.”

“Excuse me, I’ve got twenty years in SVU, and I can’t find a way either,” Benson offered. 

Barba closed a manila folder and let out an exasperated puff of air. “These were supposed to be the easy cases, the ones with living victims,” he said.

“Wait,” Cowan said. “Really, Rafael, it’s almost like _you_ haven’t had years and years of experience with SVU. Rafael, Mr. McCoy, I understand from a prosecutorial point of view why you’re all pushing so hard, but you’ve got to stop. If the victims from eight, ten years ago don’t want to talk to you, then they don’t want to talk to you. What sort of justice does it do me, or anyone else, for you to unnecessarily open up old wounds for the sake of getting your departments’ numbers up?”

So they agreed, all of them, to take what they had, work only the cases that the victims or the victims’ families wanted re-opened, and then move on when Barba’s appointment was up in November. 

“Raf,” Lombard called out, catching up with Barba and Benson in the hallway downstairs, “hold up a second.”

“What?” he asked brusquely. 

“Wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine. Thank you for your work so far.”

“I heard the guy who hired Moretti to go after the Muñozes —“

“He hired Moretti to kill them,” Barba emphasized, “which he did.”

“I heard he took a plea.”

“Twenty years to life.”

“It’s good,” Benson added. “Better than the federal attorneys expected without going to trial, right?”

Lombard shoved his hands in his pockets. “Not good enough.”

“It’s good enough,” Barba said. “Saves Yelina’s sisters the grief of having to watch me get up on the stand and testify that she confessed to having hired a guy to corner me in the elevator and threaten my life on the courthouse steps.”

“That wouldn’t have been thrown out as hearsay?”

Barba rolled his eyes. “The federal attorneys knew what they were doing.”

“When I realized that afternoon, when I called you to see how you were doing, when I realized you didn’t even know yet —“ He looked to Benson and then back to Barba. “I’m sorry, Raf. Take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

“Please, take care of yourself,” Lombard repeated. “And thanks for your help with these cases, Olivia.”

“You know,” Benson said after Lombard was gone. “I like him. Very capable sergeant. He didn’t know how lucky he was to have you.”

“Liv,” Barba warned, “let the past be the past.”

____

_Last February: Lombard’s lost in a pint glass. Benson sits next to him and the bartender brings over her favorite red wine. “Thanks for your help,” he says. “I know you’re understaffed.” He’s choking on his words. He rubs his eyes._

_“I hear your captain is thinking about retiring next year.”_

_“He is. He wants me to take the lieutenant exam.”_

_“Good, good.”_

_He taps his fingers on the wood surface. “Have you heard from him?” She knows he’s not talking about his captain._

_“No.”_

_“I don’t understand why he did what he did, why he took that baby’s life into his own hands when he could have just helped with the court order or something.”_

_She holds on to the edge of the bar. “Sergeant, please, this is the last thing I want to talk about.”_

_“He did it on account of his father, right? His father was an asshole.”_

_She closes her eyes. It’s only been a few days since he left. She’s still hurting, bad. Her heart is still somewhere down near her toes, crushed, not returning to her chest any time soon. Lombard doesn’t seem to realize that she doesn’t know as much about Barba as he does._

_Lombard’s been married for two and a half years. This is his second marriage; his first began and ended when he was very, very young. His husband is supervising the repair of all the Long Island Railroad stations damaged by Hurricane Sandy. They have an eighteen-month-old daughter at home. Lombard’s talking to his parents again. Benson knows both too much and too little, somehow._

_“Lieutenant?”_

_“Hm?” She snaps out of her trance. “Call me Olivia, please.”_

_“You okay there?”_

_“Yes, sorry, zoned out for a second. You know how exhausting the job gets some days. Most days.” She knows her eyes are wet. He’s kind enough not to call attention to that._

_“Here’s what you’ve got to understand about Rafael Barba, and then we can go back to our drinks and not think about Rafael Barba anymore. When he’s backed into a corner, he digs a hole to get himself out."_

—

One Friday night in October, when both air conditioners in Benson’s apartment were running on full blast because of a thick summer humidity that wasn’t ready to leave the city just yet, Benson sat at her dining table, her laptop open, bare feet propped up on the chair next to her, reading from a binder full of study materials for the captain exam. She read the same paragraph over and over while Barba put Noah to bed.

On his way out of Noah’s bedroom, Barba stopped in his tracks to look at her: glasses on, underlining furiously, trying to concentrate. He thanked whatever made him so lucky that she hadn’t ignored his texts that night in April, that she hadn’t kicked him out the next morning. She never owed him any kindness, but she’d welcomed him back anyway. 

He bent down and kissed the top of her head. “Where’s your study buddy tonight?”

Benson yawned, already exhausted. “Her sister’s 50th birthday. One of her brothers has a big backyard on Long Island, and … I don’t know.”

“You all right?”

“Just tired.”

“What can I do to help?”

“What you’re already doing. Hanging out with Noah so I can study at night. Three more weeks, I don’t know how I let Eames talk me into this.”

He sat with her at the table. She closed the laptop and dropped her pen. “I can’t look at this anymore.”

“So take a break,” he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek.

“I want to sleep.”

“You worked a 12-hour shift. Go to sleep.”

She yawned again. “How’s the job search coming along?”

“Go to sleep.”

“That good, huh?”

He fiddled with a corner of one of the pages in the binder, flipping it back and forth. “The law schools don’t get clearance to put out job ads until January, and the defense attorneys — who I really don’t want to work for, but I’ll take what I can get — are waiting for the last of this “Baby Killer ADA” bullshit to blow over before they’ll even talk to me.”

Eames had brought up the possibility of a new appointment with the joint task force, but she and McCoy both admitted that, as much as they wanted to help Barba out, a more permanent hire might not clear an ethics board, since his current romantic partner was in charge of Manhattan SVU and his former romantic partner, pending his passing the lieutenant exam in December, was slated to take over Brooklyn SVU when its current leader retired in the spring. 

“You need health insurance starting in December, though, right?” Benson said.

“I was planning to wrap myself in bubble wrap, throw away my scotch, order all my meat well done, and hope for the best.”

She removed her glasses and set them on the table. “I have an idea.”

He raised one eyebrow. It took her a few seconds to catch on to why he was looking at her so suspiciously. She burst out with a “No no no, that’s not what I meant, Rafa, honey, that’s not what I meant.”

“What I meant,” she said, stopping mid-sentence to catch her breath amidst a peal of laughter, “what I meant was, if you sell your apartment, you can buy yourself six more months on COBRA, and come move in with us. What you save in rent will cover what you lost in fees to Dworkin, and what you lost from the months you —“

“Liv, that’s close enough to what I thought you meant to make me nervous.”

“Really?”

“Your counterpart in Brooklyn technically owns half my furniture.”

“I’m going to bed.” She started to shuffle towards the bedroom. 

“That’s it? You’re just going to walk away?”

“I learned from the best,” she said, blowing him a kiss. 

“That was _low_ ,” he said, catching up to her in a few quick strides across the living room. He licked his lower lip as he often did when suffering from a bout of Thinking Too Much. 

“You have every right to be worried,” she said. “My last couple of relationships were challenging. They were either overdramatic or all about constantly having to “work things out.” You want to sell your place, save yourself some grief, then sell your place and move in. If you don’t, if it’s easier for you not to, if it reminds you too much of how your last relationship collapsed, then don’t. I’m too old for drama and I’m too old for headaches.”

“Olivia.” Just outside the bedroom, he nudged her into his arms. She accepted, resting her chin on his shoulder. “I am too.” 

Within four weeks, he had a board-approved buyer for his apartment.


	9. Here Now

Ten months after the day he’d foolishly left Olivia standing alone on one of the coldest days in recent memory in Manhattan, Barba found himself at a cemetery in Westchester County, a different sort of cold wind stinging his face, symbolically at a crossroads, in reality in front of the graves of two people who had died unfairly tragic deaths.

Unfair. _Unjust_ , no matter what the papers might say. In what had happened to Yelina and Alex, in their downfall, in how many minutes they must have struggled to breathe before they drowned, there was no justice. 

He crossed himself quickly, reflexively, not sure why, maybe hoping there were good defense attorneys in purgatory. Tears stung his eyes; he tried in vain to blink them back. 

“The man who arranged this is in prison, twenty years to life,” he said softly, not immune to the absurdity of talking out loud to a pair of headstones, “and the man who, who did _this_ to you was killed by an ADA after he committed horrible crimes against her. Almost forty cases are being re-opened across the country —“ He stopped himself. Standing there, trying to come up with an argument as to why they hadn’t died in vain, he sounded like a lawyer in purgatory.

“I love you.” He put a hand to his lips and walked away, towards the cemetery gate, towards the cab that would take him back to the Metro-North station. 

He boarded his train and pressed his forehead to the cool glass window, holding his ticket between his index and middle fingers, waiting for the conductor to collect it. As the train pulled out of the station, his phone buzzed, and the name “McCoy” flashed across the screen. Probably something about Moretti, he figured, even though the term of his appointment as special prosecutor had ended two weeks earlier. 

“Good afternoon, Rafael,” McCoy said, and Barba could hear him smiling on the other end, the nerve, the tone-deafness of this man to smile after all he’d put Barba through. 

McCoy had been at a dinner with the governor the night before, who had praised him for appointing Barba as special prosecutor on the Moretti cases. The governor, for once not playing politics, thought that Barba had been given a raw deal in the Baby Householder matter, that all it should have earned him was a suspension from the DAs office and a reprimand from the New York State Bar Association. “To put it bluntly,” he told Barba, “the governor handed me my ass for charging you with murder. In retrospect, he is probably right.”

He stared ahead, his expression fixed, frozen because these days he hated to think of anything in retrospect, especially that night he flipped a switch to carry out Maggie Householder’s wishes when she couldn’t find the strength to do it with her own hand, what he’d wished someone had done for him, metaphorically at least, when he had to sign his name so the doctors would take his father off life support. 

McCoy was talking about the New York State Bar again. Family court. Nassau County. Retirements. _What?_ Barba snapped out of his own memories to tune back in to what McCoy was saying. “Long story short, unless you decline, you are now under consideration for appointment to a bench in family court, the 10th judicial division.”

“I’m glad to be in the governor’s good graces, but good luck getting me past the state senate.”

Given the nature of what he’d been tried for last winter, his appointment to family court would not be cleared by the state senate, he was certain of that. Still, just a little bit of happy pride rose up in his heart knowing he’d been considered. 

When his train pulled into Grand Central, his phone chimed. He checked the message as he headed up towards the concourse: _Guess who had the SECOND HIGHEST SCORE on the exam?_

A smile spread across his face. 

He called her because he couldn’t text and walk. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “Overwhelmingly proud. So proud I’m not even going to make a “why not first?” joke. Where are you now?”

“Home. I cut out early, picked up Noah, and gave Lucy the afternoon off. I love you. Noah wants to get me a cake.”

“What kind? I’ll make it happen.”

“Noah eats enough cake as it is.”

“I’m at Grand Central. I’ll get a cake. You worked hard for this. You need cake.”

“You always take Noah’s side with regard to desserts.”

“That’s because I have the snacking habits of a child. You’ve been telling me this since we met. I love you. I’m proud of you. Text me what you want. I’m getting cake. I love you.”

Just before dinner, Fin called to tell her that the suspect they’d had in interrogation when she went home for the day had lawyered up, and they were done until they could get in touch with Stone. “Stone can take it from here,” Benson said. “Come over. Rafael insisted on bringing me a cake. Tell Rollins to grab Jesse, tell her and Carisi to come too.”

Later that evening, they crowded around the dining table to toast to Benson’s upcoming promotion. “And to no more studying!” Benson said. 

“No more 72-hour workdays!” Rollins offered. 

“We’ll see how that goes.”

“And,” Rollins added, “to two cold cases solved after 10 years.”

“In part thanks to this guy,” Benson said, nudging Carisi. “He was so insistent on examining every angle of the Cowan case that he ran all of the driver’s licenses we found in Moretti’s wallet. He’s the one who found all the DUIs.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

“Captain!” they all shouted. 

“Have we toasted to family yet?”

Rollins and Fin let out a mostly-sarcastic “aww.” “Liv’s getting soft in her old age,” Fin said. Barba, laughing, mouthed _no_ in Fin’s direction. 

“Tell me about it, grandpa.” Benson raised her glass. “To family, wherever you can get it.”

—

At midnight, they were under the comforter, facing each other, both too cold and happily exhausted to consider getting out of bed. He kissed her jawline and mumbled “marry me” into her earlobe. 

“Sweetheart, the blood hasn’t returned to your brain yet.”

“Mm, it might never. And why do I need a working brain if I’m going to be a defense attorney?” He hadn’t told her about what the governor had said to McCoy because, most likely, he really would be starting work as a defense attorney within the next three months. Besides, he wasn’t about to steal soon-to-be Captain Benson’s thunder. 

“You’re serious?”

“About being a defense attorney? Rita’s going to make it happen.”

“About “marry me”.” She slid a hand up between them and fiddled with his chest hair. 

“Liv,” he said. “It’s fine. I said it in the throes of passion.”

“You said it _after_ the throes of passion.”

Barba shrugged. “No worries.” He stood up, grabbed his boxers off the floor, slid them on, searched in vain for his undershirt, and headed to the bathroom. When he came back, Benson was on top of the covers, in pajama pants and a T-shirt. 

“Are you disappointed?” she asked.

“I’m about 20 years too old to be disappointed that you’re not still naked. Talk to me again in three hours.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I am not disappointed. I’ve been turned down before. This is nothing new. And I understand why you’re —“

“You’ve been turned down … before?”

“Once or twice.”

“Rafa.” She offered him that sympathetic head tilt that he was now so familiar with, but this time, she quickly followed with, “you’re bullshitting me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“You’re mean,” she said.

He sat on her side of the bed. “You’re beautiful. And you’re hedging.”

“Why do you want to get married?” she asked, sitting up and resting a hand on his hip. “What would that give us that we don’t have now?”

“If I dare break your heart again, I want you to have full legal recourse to revenge.”

“Come here.” She pulled him close and kissed his lips, then his shoulder. “You broke my heart, yes, but you …”

“Repented?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“When was the last time you ran away from something but came back and tried to fix it?”

“Never.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I was drunk and I gave the Lyft driver your address by mistake.”

“I know you’re not going anywhere.”

“I’m not,” he said, taking one of her hands in both of his. His eyes, sloping downwards, looked directly into hers. “I’m not.” 

“I trust you, even if you don’t trust yourself yet. I’ll tell you what. Can we get married, you and I, and not tell anyone?”

“We’ll go down to City Hall, you, me, and Noah, and we won’t breathe a word to anybody.”

“We could tell your mother, maybe. It’d be a Christmas gift to her.”

“I don’t know if I’d want to give her the satisfaction.”

“Of what?”

“You broke Yelina’s heart,” he said, imitating Lucia’s matter-of-factness. “You broke Charlie’s heart. You broke New York City’s heart. Now —“

“She never said that to you.”

“True, she doesn’t exactly call any of my past romantic partners by name.” He pursed his lips. “Let’s just say she has her own names for them. But, yes, I have broken much of New York City’s heart, haven't I?”

“Who says that other than your mother and the Ledger?”

He stood up, walked around to his side of the bed, and flopped down on his back. “Liv,” he said, staring up at the ceiling, “are you saying yes or what?”

“Here,” she said, leaning over so that she could kiss him again, “yes.”


	10. Solstice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for the comments and kudos! It's been at least 10 years since I've written fanfic, or written any fiction, really.
> 
> This is a pretty short chapter, but I'm also planning to get the last chapter (11) up tonight.
> 
> Alternate title for this chapter is "Sad Weekday Brunch Diner Wine," of course.

“This has gotten completely out of hand,” Barba said as he buttoned the vest of his three-piece gray wool suit. Four days before Christmas, he and Benson were heading down to City Hall to get married, or, as Barba had put it several times in the last two weeks, ensuring that Liv had plenty of legal recourse to revenge if necessary. 

“No kidding.” Benson was deciding between her dress blues and a blue dress. 

Barba’s mother was in their living room. “You have _six_ guests,” Lucia said. “This is not “out of hand.” You have six guests.”

When they’d applied for their marriage license online, they found out they would need to bring a witness with them when they appeared before a judge at City Hall. Barba called Eddie, who happily agreed. 

“Shit,” Barba said later that evening, “I didn’t tell Eddie that we were keeping City Hall a secret.”

Lucia called the next morning and threatened that if she wasn’t invited to join them, she would tell a hundred more people. 

They’d waited until two days before to tell Noah. Benson didn’t believe in asking children to keep secrets, so she figured 48 hours would give him enough time to process the news, but not enough time to share it. 

Later that day, Benson had to work late to close a case and Barba was interviewing at a law school up in White Plains; with Lucy still recovering from the flu, they’d had to ask Rollins to pick up Noah. Just their luck, Noah immediately told Rollins that his mom was marrying Uncle Rafa and that he really, really wanted her and Jesse to come to the wedding. Rollins cringed. 

Noah, who hadn’t asked any of the questions Benson expected him to ask, was singularly focused on getting Rollins and her daughter to come with them. “We can invite Carisi and Fin and make it a very small celebration,” Rollins suggested. 

“Really, Amanda?”

“I thought we were your family.”

“You lay on the guilt as thick as family does,” Benson said.

That was how, in a matter of days, they wound up with five more guests than they’d intended. _Six guests._ Completely out of hand indeed.

They met Eddie and Benson’s senior squad at City Hall, where they were married in a simple ceremony in front of a judge, and then headed further uptown to raise a glass of sad weekday brunch diner wine to the couple. “Thank you for being here today, even the four of you who invited yourselves,” Benson said. “Jesse’s cute, she’s exempt.”

“I’m offended!” Carisi said. 

Barba’s 360-degree eyeroll was followed with an announcement from Rollins: “Okay, okay, since having _all these guests_ is clearly too much for the bride and groom, you guys go for a walk in the park or something, and we’ll watch Noah.”

So, they found themselves walking through Central Park, long winter coats buttoned up to their chins, gloved hands linked, on their wedding day, if you could even call it that. (Barba and Benson wouldn’t call it that.) “It’ll be okay,” Barba said, seeing that Benson was a little overwhelmed by the uncertainty that happiness after tragedy, fright, and bad luck brought too, “tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.” 

“After these last few years, I want so much to be bored and happy and working and annoying you and nothing else.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.”

For a good minute, they walked in silence. “Liv,” Barba said, “McCoy called me a few weeks ago because —“

She made a face at the mention of the DAs name.

“No,” he promised. “This is good. “McCoy —“

She made the face again anyway.

“The governor wants to appoint me to the 10th District — Nassau County — as a family court judge.”

Her eyes lit up as she stopped in her tracks. “That would be wonderful.” She touched a gloved hand to his cheek. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“Has to get past the state senate first.”

“When?”

“Retirements are usually announced in January. Don’t look so hopeful. It’s not getting past the state senate. As soon as the Ledger announces that the governor appointed the “Baby Killer ADA” to family court, there’ll be outrage, there’ll be politics, and the state senate will say no way.”

She nudged his arm as they started walking again. “I’m proud of you, though.”

“Why? The appointment’s not going to be approved.”

“You kept your name in the running.”

“The outrage and the embarrassment, I’ve been through that with the Ledger before. What’s one more round?”

“You said this was a few weeks ago. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was the day you got your exam results. I wasn’t about to steal your thunder, Captain.”

She put her arm around his waist and squeezed him towards her. “See,” she said, almost as if to reassure herself, “we keep moving forward. We’ll do all right.”


	11. Forward

He’s been reading caselaw from the New York State Family Courts. 

If his appointment to a bench in the 10th Judicial District is approved (though he’s almost certain it won’t be), he needs to make sure that he never loses his grip on the law again. So he reads the worst cases, the most objectively horrific ones, the somewhat less horrific ones that remind him of everything he doesn’t want to be reminded of, again and again, until the cases and memories don’t punch him in the throat anymore. 

One night in January, he comes home late from an interrogation at the 27th Precinct — he’s been picking up some pro-bono work to keep himself in good standing with the ABA and the New York State Bar — to an empty living room. He can hear Benson in their bedroom, talking on the phone. What worries him is the dining table: Liv’s laptop open, not shut down, and papers spread out everywhere, including records of Noah’s adoption. 

He peeks into Noah’s room. The boy’s sound asleep, snoring off the remnants of his most recent winter cold. The other bedroom door is closed. He opens it slowly, cautiously, and finds her sitting cross-legged on the bed, her phone in front of her, her hands trembling.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, panic seeping into his voice as he sits at the edge of the bed.

“Sheila Porter may go free on appeal.”

He squeezes her hand and looks directly into her eyes. “We won’t let that happen.”

“I’m texting Lucy now. Trevor Langan and I are heading up to New Hampshire tomorrow. This came out of nowhere.”

“I’ll stay home. I’ll take Noah to and from school, I’ll stay with him until you come back. We _will not_ let that woman go free on appeal.”

“Okay.” She tries but fails to steady her breathing. “Okay.”

After he changes into his pajama pants and slides under the covers for the night, she sinks into his arms, struggling not to let on how terrified she is. Her skin is cold. He holds her until she falls asleep. 

The next morning, she drives up to New Hampshire with Langan. She’s relieved when a judge declares that Sheila, a non-custodial grandparent who kidnapped her grandson and then took his mother’s service pistol after striking her with a fireplace rod, has no grounds for appeal.

In exchange for leniency, Sheila signs away her right to make any future custodial claims to Noah. 

Benson hates how relieved she is. 

She comes home the next night and finds Barba on the couch, reading through the contents of a folder, probably for one of his pro-bono cases. Noah is leaning against his arm, sound asleep. She drops her purse on the dining table and sits with them. 

“My arm has been asleep for an hour,” he whispers.

“Why didn’t you put him to bed? He’s going to wake up crying and probably won’t fall asleep for another hour now.”

Barba shrugs.

“You were worried too,” Benson says.

“Very.”

“Langan said I got myself worked up for no reason, that she’d never have made it all the way through the appellate courts up there.”

“Yes, but if they found grounds for appeal, you’d be up there in court every other week, the adoption would have been questioned —“

She raises a finger to her lips and gently picks up Noah, who lets out a few grunts of complaint but lets his mother carry him off to bed. “That’s a miracle if I ever saw one,” she says when she returns to the couch. “I thought for sure he’d be up screaming at us.”

“How are you doing?” he asks. “This was terrifying for you. I could see it.”

“You too.”

“I admit, I had my eyes peeled when I was walking him to school, wouldn’t let him out of my sight, even introduced myself to the school security guard …”

“Look at you, a parent.”

Leaning back, they slump into the couch together. “I’ve been reading a lot of caselaw,” he says.

“I noticed.”

“A lot of cases involving stepparents pass through family court. Mostly custodial.”

“If a parent dies, the stepparent has no rights to the child, not even visitation.”

“Now,” Barba said, “as Captain Eames and Sergeant Tutuola will attest, Captain Olivia Benson is immortal.”

She tilts her head to the side and reaches over to rub his arm. “You want to adopt Noah?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re prepared in case everyone’s wrong about my alleged immortality?”

“He’s legally more secure the way.”

“Legally,” she says with a laugh.

“It’s true.”

“Is it also because you want to be his father?”

“Yes.” The answer is honest, clearly honest, but from her position next to him, she can feel his heart racing. 

“My son is a beautiful boy. My son is a beautiful boy who is the product of a violent pimp who shot a judge and a witness in open court and a heroin-addicted prostitute who died a horrific violent death. I don’t think about any of that when I look at him. I see a bright little boy who has nothing to do with the violence that brought him into this world.”

“There’s a lot of paperwork,” he says. “We should get started soon.” 

“Rafa.”

“What do you want me to say? I will never … he never … you know I don’t like to talk about this. I want to be Noah’s father, not my father. I’m tired of the psychological canard that says we have to always worry about turning into our parents.”

“So am I,” she says.

—

Early one Saturday morning, when they’re letting Benson sleep in, Barba has a talk with Noah about commuting his 107-year sentence. It’s Noah who brings it up; he’s in first grade and “too old for jail games” and besides, he’s happy that Uncle Rafa and his mom are friends again (“You know we’re married, don’t you?” “Yes, when we went to the diner with Jesse. You’re married but you’re also friends.”) He says he’ll commute the rest of Barba’s sentence and that Barba can be his dad as long as he brings him snacks and doesn’t move away.

____

It’s one year to the day when Barba resigned from his position as ADA, packed up his office and forehead-kissed Benson goodbye, unexpectedly walking out of her life just as unexpectedly as he’d flushed his career aspirations down the toilet. Benson’s working late to help her detectives close a case. She gets home after Noah’s asleep, nukes a slice of pizza from the fridge, and asks Barba if he’s heard anything about the state senate.

“I have,” he says through pursed lips. 

“Bad news?”

“Not quite. They’ve asked me to appear before them next week. I’ll go up to Albany, give my impassioned speech, and then I’ll come home with my tail between my legs and accept that job with Rita’s firm.”

“Hmph.” She’s still chewing on greasy re-heated pizza.

“Was that a “my mouth is full of pizza” _hmph_ or an “I can’t believe you’re going to become a defense attorney” _hmph_?”

She swallows the last of her pizza and kisses him as she playfully untucks his undershirt from his pajama pants. “It’s an “I believe in your humanity and the New York State Senate should too” _hmph_.”

“You’ve got pizza grease all over your hands.”

“What’re you going to do about it?” she teases.

“I have a few ideas.” He kisses a spot behind her ear, which somehow also has pizza grease on it. He laughs against her skin. 

Neither of them acknowledges what day it is.

—

He heads up to Albany the next week, faces the questions he was prepared for (and one he wasn’t: one of the senators asks a question about his involvement in the Alex Muñoz corruption cases; that one stings for a second), then returns to his hotel room to order dinner, shower, and FaceTime Liv and Noah. 

Just after 8, he’s getting out of the shower when he gets a call from the governor’s office. He’s surprised (but not too surprised) that they’ve got the assistants working so late.

It’s the department that handles judiciary appointments. They’re calling after business hours because they want to make sure that all the new appointees will have time to register for the weeklong institute required of new judges taking the bench. 

His appointment has cleared the state senate. 

By the time he calls home, his eyes are betraying him with happy tears. 

Benson covers her mouth with her hand as soon as he comes into view on her screen. “I’ve got a weeklong legal institute the first week of March, and then I’ll be sworn in,” he tells her.

“Yes!” she shouts, and he can hear Noah laughing in the background. She moves her hand from her mouth to her heart. “When can we start addressing you as The Honorable Rafael Barba?”

He catches the first train back to New York City the next morning and heads over to SVU. As soon as Benson sees him, she stands up from behind her desk, walks over to him in three long strides as he closes the door, and wraps her arms around him, squeezing so tightly that he almost loses his breath. She understands. She knows what this means to him.

—-

They celebrate at home with Lucia, Eddie (who has to ask Lucia twice to please not bring up her theory about Alex looking out for Rafael while he testified before the state senate), Benson’s senior squad (Carisi’s kvelling), and Rita (who still can’t believe that she was left out of both Barba’s wedding and murder trial). Eames calls to congratulate him. Lombard sees Benson at a meeting the next week and asks her to please pass his congratulations on.

For the next three weeks, Barba’s meeting with senior judges in Nassau County and going to a legal institute on a campus up in Westchester. He’s hurrying out the door every morning, hoping the Long Island Rail Road or Metro North is running on time, and Benson is squabbling with him about how he really needs to (re-)learn how to drive. 

Rita Calhoun’s take: “Rafael Barba is so afraid of making left turns into traffic that he makes three rights instead.”

Benson reminds him that he’ll be commuting off-peak both ways, that nobody in their right mind commutes west-to-east by train in the morning. With a wink and a caress, he promises her more time with his suspenders if she never, ever asks him to get behind the wheel of a car again. 

“That’s a great offer, but you’re screwed if you miss the last LIRR train or if the only train that gets you to the courthouse is out of service. So how about I take you out driving on weekends and I make you some promises in return?”

“I’ll take that deal.”

“So quickly? Your negotiating skills are falling by the wayside there, Mr. Barba.”

“When it’s you whispering filthy promises in my ear, all bets are off.”

The whole way through the Midtown Tunnel, across the Long Island Expressway and onto the street that takes him to the courthouse where he’ll soon be employed, he complains that the Railroad is easier, when it’s running on time that is, when no possums or cats on the track, when it’s not raining, and besides, driving Benson’s car makes him feel short. 

“It makes you “feel” short,” she echoes, and his eyes narrow. “Admit it, though, this makes more sense than a subway, two commuter trains, and a six-block walk.” 

“Everything makes more sense.” He leans over and kisses her. “But you’re driving to the swearing-in ceremony.”

——

On a rainy morning two weeks before the start of spring, Rafael Barba is sworn in as a judge in the 10th judicial district of New York State. Benson, Noah, and Lucia sit in the gallery. 

“I’m proud of him,” Lucia whispers to her daughter-in-law. “I thought he had thrown away everything last year, I really thought that was it for him, but this, this is where I always hoped he’d be. The Honorable Rafael Barba.”

“Tell him that,” Benson says. 

“He doesn’t need to hear —“

“Tell him.”

Barba, in his judicial regalia for the first time, raises his right hand and takes the oath of office. 

Immediately afterwards, he does what he’s done in courtrooms for the better part of the last seven years: he glances back at Olivia Benson so they can check in with each other before moving forward.


End file.
